


Welcome to New York

by cat_77



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Parabatai Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 06:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18805447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: They did things a little differently around here.





	Welcome to New York

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted some snarky family feels.
> 
> * * *

The attack was at the docks because of course it was. Multiple points of entry, multiple escape routes, shadowy corners to lurk behind, and that pesky nearness to water that made tracking that much more difficult. Well, standard tracking. Mix in a warlock and a set of parabatai and it was a little clearer, but not by much.

By the time Alec both got there and got into position, it was nearly too late. It would have been for pretty much everyone save for the exact people involved in this little soiree. 

The pack of werewolves had gotten dosed with a seelie potion that did not have a favorable reaction, to say the least. Given that Luke had once called this particular pack rabid on a good day did not help matters. They had gone on a rampage, their seelie contact had notified the Institute, and Jace had run out to deal with it, Clary at his side. Alec had told them to wait, which of course they didn’t, while he notified the Clave as well as Luke and Maia in hopes that the other werewolves might bring the visiting pack around to the side of reason and that the Clave would have resources ready when that inevitably failed.

Alec had just managed to climb atop a stack of shipping containers to get a good vantage point when everything went south. He saw Clary tossed to the side with a decent sized slash across her thigh. Her hands were cuffed before her with what looked to be the very type of reinforced manacles Jace had brought for the wolves. Jace himself had a chain wrapped around his neck, a similar set of cuffs about his wrists, and was bodily dragged to the water and chucked in while the pack of only partially turned wolves howled in amusement. They left Clary where she was for now, probably because she looked like little more than an unconscious heap, and started back in on their roughhousing that had already cost more than a single business a great deal of money that night.

As for Alec himself, he was torn. To start picking off the wolves would give away his position and they would lose the element of surprise before Luke and Maia could even have a chance at semi-rational confrontation. On the other hand, his own chest burned in sympathy with his parabatai’s lack of oxygen, throat and neck tight from the constriction of the chains. It wasn’t like Jace would be able to use an unlocking rune, what with precisely two steles to be seen: one snapped in two at Clary’s feet, and the other being silently folded into the clearly not unconscious redhead’s fingers. She had a chance at freeing herself and escaping, whether or not he made his move. Jace, not so much.

Or perhaps he was wrong.

The water glowed golden in the darkness of the night, two or perhaps three pinpoints beneath the waves. His chest eased and he knew Jace had activated his rune to breath under duress, a fitting descriptor for being chained underwater. Even that wouldn’t last that long though, and so he could only assume what the others were when his parabatai broke both the surface and the manacles at once.

He knew he wouldn’t get another distraction nearly as dramatic as a supposedly dead man rising from the sea, and so he signaled the waiting Izzy and started to pick off the wolves one by one, reminding himself to disable only, for now.

The battle was already skewed long before Jace punched one of the wolves and stole his seraph blade back from him, the angelic light igniting the moment his hand touched the hilt. Add in a newly freed Clary with her dual blades, Izzy with her whip, and the finally arriving Luke and Maia, and it was as good as finished while he still had over half a quiver left.

“How?” one of the wolves asked when Alec jumped down and approached the others. The woman’s eyes were bloodshot and her incisors only half extended though her claws were ready to do more damage if given the chance. That chance didn’t come as her wrists were cuffed behind her, but she still managed to gripe, “None of the Nephilim in Hoboken can do that!”

He wasn’t going to answer, and he highly doubted anyone else would either. Of course, he was proven wrong when Jace smirked and told the woman, “Welcome to New York.”

Alec knew the cocky attitude was a cover. He could still feel more aches and pains than he first suspected and he didn’t have a scratch on him. He held out his own stele and gestured towards where he knew Jace’s iratze was, but didn’t resist the urge to raise an eyebrow and jibe, “Unless you want to show off again?”

Jace took it, but only to swipe over Clary’s neck where her own healing rune lay. His dark and soaked shirt glowed golden near his hipbone and Alec felt the rush almost as much as he saw the tense shoulders before him relax a fraction.

“Brat,” Isabelle chided. She handed the offered stele back to her brother and raised herself up to offer Jace a peck on the cheek before she returned her attention to the rather subdued wolves.

“That’s a good look on you,” Maia commented as she approached. 

“Hot and wet?” Jace guessed and Alec swore he puffed out his chest slightly.

“I was thinking more ‘drowned rat’ myself,” Maia replied as she walked right past him to assess the interlopers to her territory.

Jace pursed his lips into a pout and Alec did his best not to laugh, or at least not obviously so, at his surrogate brother’s wounded pride. Clary had no such compulsion and offered a snort of, “You walked right into that one.”

Family safe, threat abated as much as if could be for the time being, Alec shouldered his bow and shrugged. “You really kind of did,” he agreed, mainly just to see the pout grow.

There’d be hot coffee and tales of heroics later. For now, he glanced around the area and confirmed his friends, his family, were as unscathed as they could be, and called it a night.


End file.
